The author | Jiarong
Edit the | Page
In the 1980s and 1990s, with the opening up of the market economy, the labor force migrated in the north and south of China, which directly led to the development of the transportation industry. At that time, on the streets of Guangdong, it was common to see long queues in front of the railway station, all of which were people who bought tickets and grabbed tickets.
It was a period of relatively transparent ticket sales, and the reserved ticket amount for each train was announced at the station. Although it is not as convenient as it is now, there is only the same "starting line" in front of the station. If you want to buy a ticket, there is only one way: according to the reserved ticket amount, the sooner you go to the queue, the more you can buy a ticket.
Throughout the ages, wherever there is demand, there is business. Some "scalpers" have made a lot of money from queuing up early to grab tickets to attacking 12306's system vulnerabilities in the Internet era to lock and release tickets. The starting line is still there, but the rules have been disrupted.
With the improvement of the 12306 official website system and the real-name system, scalpers have stopped and ticket grabbing has not stopped. In addition to the loss, the rise of online booking platforms, "acceleration package", "friend help", "diversion" and other ways to grab tickets have become popular.
In addition to the debate about whether these ticket-snatching methods are "IQ tax" or "genuine", 12306's game with third-party platforms has been going on. When accelerating product homogenization, platforms are also "rolling on the roll".
Invisibly, behind the ticket-grabbing track is far more than just the ticket buyers competing for each other.
01 Schrödinger's acceleration pack
Is the acceleration pack really an IQ tax? For customers, "whether or not to grab the ticket" is the only useful basis for judging whether the acceleration package is useful, but in the ticket snatching system, it is not "speed is everything".
Choosing a destination to place an order, sharing it with friends, and anxiously waiting for the ticket to be issued are the processes that Xiao Yang must follow every time he travels back and forth between school and home. Among them, "Share with friends to help get the acceleration pack" is a key step in the process.
"This stuff is very chicken", she described the feature this way despite the aggressive retweeting of the link.
Xiao Yang told "New Entropy" that the help of friends is actually a kind of psychological comfort. When riding in the same car, she found that the same ticket was grabbed without the help of a friend; another time she grabbed the ticket after inviting many people to help, and later found that she only caught up with the second release. How much of a role the "acceleration pack" played in it, she didn't have much obvious feelings.
And Xiao Yang is just a microcosm of the thousands of "acceleration packages" to grab tickets. However, unlike Dan's consolation, there is another group of people who buy acceleration packages, and they do "profit" from acceleration packages.
The difference is that it costs tens to 100 yuan to buy acceleration packages directly on the platform, and you can buy stacks multiple times to achieve the "highest speed".
In the reviews of the acceleration package sold on Taobao, there was feedback that it was useless after the purchase, but most of the reviews showed that they did help them grab the tickets they wanted. The data is true and false, but the product has survived so far, and it is not difficult to believe that some of them did grab tickets through acceleration packages. After all, although the seller is fine, the buyer is not stupid.
So did the booster pack really speed up? The so-called "faster than on 12306", where does "fast" come from?
The explanation of the relevant products and services on the US group is: "it can effectively improve the speed of ticket snatching and increase the resources for grabbing tickets"; Fliggy customer service told "New Entropy" that whether it can grab it also needs to see if 12306 has a refund, if you do not buy an acceleration package, it is no different from buying directly at 12306.
Some analysts believe that the essence of the "acceleration package" is only to "increase broadband speed", but some product managers do not think so.
In the PMCAFF product manager community, the former head of the Good Future product group believes that this kind of ticket snatching principle has nothing to do with broadband, but depends on the time that the ticket snatch server interacts with the 12306 server. Broadband can only guarantee that under the same network conditions, network requests will not increase the latency of interaction due to network congestion.
"Suppose I have a server in Europe with 10G bandwidth, a server in Beijing with 10M broadband, the time when the two servers interact with the 12306 server is not necessarily the European server fast, I'm afraid that when the European server reacts, the tickets are gone."
But he said that the principle of the acceleration package can be compared with the principle of queue: "For example, I have a train and open 10 ticket windows, then at the same time I can only respond to the ticket purchase requests of 10 users (including real users and ticket snatching servers), and there are 10 teams, such as the ticket snatching software occupies a team, and then he gets 20 robots to queue there, if you don't buy an acceleration package, your ticket purchase demand is submitted by the robot at the end of the line, if you buy, your ticket purchase demand can be responded to earlier." ”
Ctrip's product manager also followed suit and said: "It has nothing to do with broadband", the adjustment is the allocation priority after ticket snatching, and the friend help will increase the priority.
Image source: People's Daily
According to the 12306 official statement that "the acceleration package does not have the right of priority to purchase tickets", it can be inferred that the priority that the acceleration package can give is not accelerated in the team of 12306, but accelerated on a third-party platform.
"New Entropy" found that the number of people who choose ticket snatching services on the Fliggy platform can reach more than 1 million people every day, and the Zhixing platform can reach more than 800,000 people. In terms of customer feedback, it is currently in a state of polarization. Some bought and did not grab tickets, and some bought tickets that did.
In essence, whether the acceleration package adjusts the speed of the network or the allocation priority, it is not the only independent factor that determines the final outcome. The number of tickets is a certain amount, some people have not grabbed tickets when they fill the acceleration bar, and some people have only bought an acceleration package but have grabbed tickets. This is also inseparable from the scripting between different platforms and the difference in broadband quality, after all, the system is not uniform. Major platforms are also well aware of this, and will indicate that the success rate is not 100% in the ticket snatching rules.
In addition to the result of the final ticket snatching, many buyers choose because of the convenience of the process. Many users said that the reason for buying the acceleration package is to "save time and effort", after buying it, you only need to wait for the result, and if you don't buy it, you have to personally stare at the ticket time and the number of remaining tickets. At this point, there is no doubt that the network, manpower and channels of the third-party platform can provide buyers with some "advantages" to a certain extent.
It can be seen that the ticket snatching process is driven by a variety of factors, and whether or not to grab tickets is not just a single acceleration package that can be solved. But existence is reasonable, and whether the acceleration package is an IQ tax cannot be judged solely by "whether the ticket was grabbed". Whether consumers have obtained other "priorities" in the ticketing service in the process of use is also a factor that needs to be considered.
02 Rashomon of 12306
12306 has long made it clear that the "acceleration package" does not have the right of first refusal to purchase tickets, and no matter which ticketing software needs to queue up in the railway 12306 ticketing system.
As of 8:00 p.m. on January 6, 2022, Fliggy and Chi Heng snatched ticket data
However, at the same time, the "acceleration package" has not been removed from the third-party platform, and the enthusiasm of users has not diminished, and the user data of ordering acceleration packages on major platforms every day is still growing. As of 8:00 p.m. on January 6, 2022, more than 1.7 million people on Fliggy chose ticket-grabbing services on that day, and more than 1.26 million people on the Zhixing platform that day.
Shan Xinghua, director of the 12306 Technical Department of the China Academy of Railway Sciences, has said that because the use of ticket snatching software will reduce the speed of other manual query users, which in turn will lead to system delays, in order to protect the rights and interests of users, they have blocked multiple channels of ticket-snatching software.
If 12306 has blocked multiple channels for ticket-snatching software, but the acceleration package is still popular in the market, is the 12306 system still vulnerable, or is the third-party acceleration package pervasive?
12306 has had a number of bugs since its launch. In 2014, 12306 was caught in the "pseudo real name" storm. A news headlined "Qingfeng Bun Shop Can Buy Train Tickets" put it on the cusp. At that time, as long as there was an ID number, the name of the ticket could be changed at will, and even the names of anime characters and shop names could be bought. Now the real-name system has been perfected, but every time the Spring Festival ticket rush, 12306 will occasionally "flash crash", and many users cannot log in.
Even if the system costs hundreds of millions of yuan to build, it is not impossible for the official website that serves hundreds of millions of traffic to make a bug again. It only said that it had blocked "multiple" ticket-snatching software channels, not "all". However, the acceleration package business of the current head third-party booking platform has not been affected by the operation, so if even the "big head" 12306 cannot be blocked, even if some small ticket-snatching software channels are blocked, I am afraid it will not help.
With the continuous innovation of third-party platform technology, the game between the booking platform and the official platform seems to be expanding, but with the launch of the official standby booking function, the balance of users' favorites has begun to tilt towards 12306.
Similar to the "official ticket rush" standby booking function, it means that when there is no ticket, passengers can submit ticket purchase requirements according to date, train number and seat type, and after prepaying the ticket, the ticketing system automatically arranges online queuing waiting. When the corresponding train or seat is available for sale due to refunds, changes, etc., the system will automatically redeem the ticket and notify the passenger of the purchase result.
Image source: 12306
A 12306 user said: "The standby function is very easy to use, and I buy a ticket every time." The acceleration package has never been used, and whether or not I can buy a ticket depends on whether there is a ticket or not, not that I pulled a few people to help. ”
Who is stronger and who is weaker than the alternate features and acceleration packs? One explanation is that the standby function is to queue up in the ticket pool in the background of 12306, and this queue will be released after the queue is completed, and then the major platforms will queue up. This also means that for now, the standby function can give the highest priority in the ticket snatching process.
On January 6, the 12306 website took another step forward in the service experience. The ticketing service time is extended from 5:00 to 23:00 before, to 5:00 to 1:00 a.m. the next day (except every Tuesday), and a 24-hour Internet refund service is provided, and the refund deadline is extended from 25 minutes before the bus stop to before the car, and the 12306 client is added to log in the refund channel without login.
Third-party platforms have more challenges. In addition to trying to crack the port and bypass the restrictions, it is also necessary to face the suspicion of "undermining fairness" and "inducing consumers".
Most of the legal people in the system and legal groups believe that the ticket-snatching platform belongs to the gray area of public order, and it is difficult for users who are not familiar with the network to win the ticket-snatching war, thus affecting fairness.
Internet practitioners believe that technology provides convenience and cannot be wasted because of choking. Kai-Fu Lee has publicly stated: "Some people say that netizens who buy ticket software will use it, but migrant workers will not use it, resulting in social unfairness, so it is illegal." If this is also illegal, will the Civil Aviation Administration stop using where to buy tickets, the Ministry of Communications to stop using navigation shortcuts, the Ministry of Commerce to stop using Taobao to buy bargains, and the Ministry of Education to prohibit the use of English learning software to prepare for the college entrance examination? If you want to take care of migrant workers, only the Ministry of Railways starts from the source and distributes online and offline. ”
In addition, as far as the hat of "inducing consumers" is concerned, the merchant can clearly not guarantee a 100% success rate, but still uses exaggerated words such as "the whole network is leading" and "extremely fast". Including the so-called "pay if you can't grab it", but the actual payment is not only conditional, but more of a voucher than a ticket.
Even if 12306 and third-party platforms continue to game, it is not difficult to find that it is still necessary to log in to 12306's account and password, so it seems that the final traffic point is actually 12306. And there is no doubt that as long as 12306 does not release tickets, the major platforms can not "create tickets out of thin air" for customers no matter how skilled.
03 Big fish can't eat small fish
In fact, there are no less "volumes" within the third-party platform.
If you want to get priority on the track of ticket grabbing, the major booking platforms also want to compete on the track. At present, it is mainly through three means: one is to obtain a "free" acceleration package through the help of friends, the other is to directly purchase the acceleration package by adding money when purchasing tickets, and the prices of different platforms vary, less than a few tens of yuan or more than hundreds of yuan, and the third is to use a diversion platform.
At present, the major platforms almost all use the first two "acceleration package" strategies to achieve ticket snatching, and in addition to the homogenized large platforms, there is also a kind of "diversion" technology used by small platforms, the most famous of which is Bypass.
Bypass software page
On bypass's official website, there is a story of founder Xiaofeng who founded the software. The boy who was stranded in Hangzhou because he couldn't grab a ticket in October 2013 has since begun the diversion journey of 12306. He wrote every iteration of the improvement on the official website.
Unlike the big platforms that are suspected of "inducing consumption", this software is a clear stream for some ticket snatchers. Most of the users on the platform are free users, and there are also many grateful 20 yuan appreciation.
Whether it is the current Fliggy, Zhixing or Qunar.com, behind it is a huge platform operation group. Traffic, marketing, so that these big platforms capture a large number of users who want to grab tickets is not surprising. And even if the investment is huge, the use of the feeling is mixed.
The purpose of Bypass's website is "not to advertise, not to promote, not to carry viruses, not to collect private information, and to accept technical evaluations from all parties, and wholeheartedly create a ticket-snatching software for users." Relying only on a lonely personal dream, but there is a higher proportion of "loyal" users than the big platform.
As of now, excluding the internal test group, Bypass has accumulated a total of 39 user exchange groups. The number of people varies from 500 to 2,000 people per group, most of which are full, and the number of people is calculated to be about 56,000. It's not even one-thirtieth of the number of people grabbing tickets on big platforms every day. But when it comes to Bypass users, they all have a very high evaluation and high return rate, and no one doubts that it is an "IQ tax", or even rated it as a "work of conscience".
The picture shows the founder Xiaofeng and the user communication in the Bypass communication group
Compared with the number of people, Bypass is naturally not as large as the users of the platform; than the traffic, in addition to the official website, users almost all rely on "tap water" recommendations; than marketing, free software can burn a handful of money.
A small platform has a higher percentage of praise, is the diversion technology really better or the survivor bias?
In terms of technology, a technical person in the online ticketing industry said on Zhihu that the 12306 interface is essentially divided into mobile App and PC website interface, and the current major App booking platforms use the former, while the diversion website uses the latter. Comparatively speaking, the former is more difficult to crack and more stable.
"Therefore, technically speaking, whether it is internal data, the comprehensive success rate of ticket snatching in the above App is far greater than that of the so-called shunt ticket snatching."
It may be that the number of users itself is small, or perhaps the expectations of free users are not high, and from the results, this niche platform has indeed captured the minds of a group of users. But for the big platform, in addition to the pressure to conquer the market, the expectations of the capital market also need to spell out a bloody road on this battlefield.
Only when any product goes through the user model can it better tap the way to profitability. Obviously, the "acceleration packs" have not yet found the greatest common divisor in terms of user experience.
There is no market without competition, and the game between 12306 and third-party platforms will continue. Looking back at the process of 12306 system update, behind it are accompanied by different forms of "intrusion", either active or passive, as a sentence on bypass's official website - "diversion, not just a technical battle".
The mode of transportation can be changed, and the travel can be staggered, but the three games between the official website, the platform, and the user have no stop.